Amazon’s smart speakers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, each one has different benefits and will be suited to different spots in the home.
The tiny little Amazon Echo Dot will be plenty for your bedroom alarm clock, or if you plan to listen to music occasionally in there then you might be better off buying the regular Amazon Echo. But if you want something to sit centrally in your home and help you get organised then you might find that one of their smart displays is right for you, like the Amazon Echo Show 8 or the Amazon Echo Show 15.
For your living room or kitchen, you'll want more of a home speaker, in which case you should go for the all-new 2022 release of the Amazon Echo Studio because it’s their best smart speaker yet. As you'd expect you get all the perks of Alexa built-in, and you can use this as your Zigbee smart home hub too.
There are a few reasons why I think it comes out on top, but there’s one thing that some people might find a little off-putting.
It's powerful
First and foremost, the sound is what will draw people to the Amazon Echo Studio, it’ll easily fill up the space it’s in and then some. Competing with top dogs Apple and Sonos, this is by far Amazon’s most powerful smart speaker which is what makes it so well suited to communal spaces like the living room or kitchen - it’s loud enough to soundtrack a party and the 360-degree design makes the audio experience the same wherever you’re stood in relation to it.
Not only that, but the performance is immersive too thanks to Dolby Atmos surround sound support and Sony 360 Reality Audio. Songs boom across the room making you feel like you could actually be listening to them live.
In the Amazon Echo Studio (2022) review, I described the sound as being ‘clear and relatively precise as well, with thumping bass and distinct treble although the mids could sometimes get a little lost in translation.'
The sound adapts to the space
The Amazon Echo Studio (2022) has one feature that you don’t get in any of the other Echo devices - room-adaption technology.
It’s able to analyse the acoustics of the room around it using the built-in microphones and then uses that information to automatically adjust the equaliser to give you perfectly tuned sound for the space it’s in.
You can connect to it in a few ways
All Echo devices are well-versed in wireless connectivity - you can play music over your Wi-Fi network and they all have Bluetooth built-in too.
But the Amazon Echo Studio goes a step further than that with two additional wired ways to connect, through a 3.5 mm audio input and an optical input. That opens up doors to play music (or other content) from more devices, like from your TV in the place of a soundbar.
But it’s a bit of an eye sore
It all sounds great, and this is undoubtedly a step above all of the other Echo devices in a number of ways. But there’s one more thing worth mentioning, the design is pretty divisive. Some people will love it and some really won’t.
The Amazon Echo Studio is a bulky home speaker that needs a lot of space, it looks like an inflated Amazon Echo, with a gap towards the base and a large ring light on the top. Aesthetically, it’s not going to fit in as well with your home, as say the Sonos One. But in saying that, you can now buy it in two colourways (white and black) which will help you match it to your decor.
You can buy the Amazon Echo Studio now for $200 in the US, £190 in the UK and AU$330 in Australia. See the best deals on it from across the web right now in the widget below.
